My favorite is FFIV. The first half of six was good. The World of Balance was the best Final Fantasy experience I've had, but the World of Ruin sort of came apart. Alot of the flaws that I dislike about the Word of Ruin are there from the beginning of FFVII. Only characters really liked in FFVII were Nanaki, Vincent, and to a lesser extent Zack.

Sakaguchi is the best ;)

I love all him works especially Lost Odyssey.

The quality started leaving Square before Sakaguchi left. I'd say quality left around 1997, when the guise of commercialization became clear. Obviously, a company exists to make money, but it was around then when it was visible that their goal was only profit. Before that, it was hidden behind making great games. Unfortunately, they also pulled Enix into this trap after the merger...

I disagree, I thought that the Final Fantasy series started declining before Sakaguchi left. I was a fan starting with the original but I found myself enjoying each subsequent iteration of Final Fantasy after VI (III) less and less.

Enix offered to buy up S-E, so technically Enix sucked up Squaresoft to money hungry bastards lol

Whilst I agree spirits within was absolute crap that does nothing to blunt gooch's games development successes since its a totally different artistic medium.

But boy was it crappy.

When FFXIII comes out there will be no doubt Square Enix is still the king of RPG's!

Ok the amount of people downplaying Sakaguchi is now getting ridiculous. It's ok if you don't like the guy, his style, his idea of gaming but that doesn't change the impact both negative and positive he's put into the industry.

Sakaguchi has never been too great when it comes to story, Lost Odyssey and FF5 are the best stories he's ever written imo and their story isn't even that great. He's oldschool and has similar ideas to Miyamoto in that game comes first, story comes after. If I was Square I would never give Sakaguchi a movie directing position and I would rather give the role to Kitase or Nomura simply because they play more into their strengths.

Sakaguchi's forte in my view is obviously in his turn based battle system. Lost Odssey and Blue Dragon feel old school, but at the same time add small inventive aspects that make them much more fun. To put it simply I feel at home somehow when I'm playing a Sakaguchi game, extremely comforting. If it were my choice to create a dreamteam turn based RPG team I would definitely have Sakaguchi in there to work on battle system. For story I would definitely have someone else write a script instead.